Daily Dothttp://www.dailydot.com/Daily Dot Articleen-usMon, 03 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000Podspotting: 5 tips for a better podcasthttp://www.dailydot.com/politics/podspotting-5-tips-better-podcast/<p><img src='//cdn0.dailydot.com/cache/0a/5c/0a5c69e4fb859b63b36d0fc8e6b47148.jpg'></p><p>
Every year the Pew Research Center&rsquo;s Project for Excellence in Journalism releases the State of the News Media, a data-filled snapshot of the media habits of Americans. According <a href="http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/audio-how-far-will-digital-go/audio-by-the-numbers/">the 2012 edition of that report</a>&mdash;which used data from <a href="http://www.podcastalley.com/">Podcast Alley</a>&mdash;there were 91,659 podcasts by the end of 2011.</p>
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Now, Podspotting hasn&rsquo;t listened to all 90,000 of these podcasts. But as a voracious podcast listener, I <em>have</em> caught a staggeringly large number of them, from focused-as-a-laser oddities (like <a href="http://www.whiskycast.com/">the excellent <em>Whiskycast</em></a>) to the dozens of general-interest sex shows I scoped out in the course of researching <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/podspotting-4-best-sex-podcasts/">the top sex podcasts</a>. And in doing so, I&rsquo;ve made a not especially surprising discovery: There are a lot of also-ran podcasts out there with crippling problems.</p>
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It&rsquo;s a frustrating and frequent occurrence to stumble upon a podcast with serious promise but equally serious flaws&mdash;a show that could be great were it not for one or more fixable transgressions. And some of these defects are astonishingly common; listen to enough podcasts and you, too, will suffer a strong sense of&nbsp;d&eacute;j&agrave; vu&nbsp;when you hear yet another rambling, unfocused host or an interview with a guest that sounds, quite literally, phoned-in.</p>
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Yes, the podcast seas can be choppy, but it need not be this way. After hearing one too many halting podcasts, I&rsquo;ve crafted this list of five of the most important pieces of advice for any podcast producer or would-be producer&mdash;a rebuttal of sorts to some of the problems that I keep hearing over and over again as I scope out new shows.</p>
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<big><strong>1) &ldquo;Brevity is the soul of wit.&rdquo; </strong></big></p>
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You may recognize that quote; it&rsquo;s one of the many famous lines uttered by Polonius, King Claudius&rsquo;s counsellor in William Shakespeare&rsquo;s <em>Hamlet</em>. Polonius is wrong about nearly everything in <em>Hamlet</em>&mdash;and (spoiler alert!) eventually gets himself rather unceremoniously stabbed and killed&mdash;but he was at least right on the money with this one. Most podcasts needn&rsquo;t to stretch past one, two, or three hours. Although there are a select few podcast hosts on this planet that can hold court and stay entertaining for such an incredibly long period of time, it&rsquo;s a tremendously rare skill. There is only a one in 7 billion chance that you are <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/jimmy-pardo-never-not-funny-interview/">Jimmy Pardo</a>, and those aren&rsquo;t good odds.</p>
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Instead, most podcasts could benefit from shedding some minutes; a podcast is likely to be more impactful and memorable&mdash;and less likely to suffer from directionless rambling, perhaps the most common and cardinal sin of the podcast medium&mdash;if it&rsquo;s shorter. Plus, there&rsquo;s an inversely proportional relationship between a podcast&rsquo;s running time and its accessibility. A three-hour podcast asks for an enormous commitment from prospective listeners; by contrast, even the world&rsquo;s busiest person could find time for <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/">one of <em>Scientific American</em>&rsquo;s 60-second podcasts</a>.</p>
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<big><strong>2) Audio production matters. </strong></big></p>
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When queuing up a new podcast for the first time, there&rsquo;s probably not a more immediately noticeable red flag then obviously shoddy audio quality. Sub-par sound can take many forms: a host or a guest that sounds as though they were recorded through a tin-can telephone, sound levels that resemble mountainous topographic maps, or distractingly loud ambient noise that reveals that the show was probably recorded on an iPhone in a busy taqueria.</p>
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This problem can plague even the most ostensibly professional podcast&mdash;particularly in live episodes. Even if your podcast is something of a lark, if you want anybody other than your friends and family to listen to it&mdash;heck, if you want even your friends and family to listen to your podcast for more than five minutes&mdash;you&rsquo;ll need to get serious about recording a professional-sounding show. Get yourself to Amazon and buy a halfway-decent microphone.</p>
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<big><strong>3) Diversity in voices is a good thing.</strong></big></p>
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To put it bluntly, many podcasts are hosted by two or more 20-or-30something white guys. Not only can this get monotonous for a listener&rsquo;s ears, but in the most egregious cases of same-sounding hosts and guests it can even be difficult to discern who&rsquo;s talking. A more diversified mix of hosts and guests of varying genders, ages, and backgrounds is not only likely to make your podcast more interesting, but it&rsquo;s also likely to make the show more lively to the ears.</p>
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<big><strong>4) Premise and format are your friends. </strong></big></p>
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Just as a very small group of hosts can successfully pull of a long, windy, rambling show, very few hosts can pull off a show without any sort of real premise. And even if you could, the podcast universe probably already has enough &ldquo;A group of friends and/or a guest talk about whatever pops into their head for three hours&rdquo; shows. Instead, take inspiration from the many funny, enjoyable podcasts that excel thanks in part to a unique premise&mdash;like Nerdist Industries&rsquo; <a href="http://www.nerdist.com/podcast/mike-and-tom-eat-snacks/"><em>Mike and Tom Eat Snacks</em></a>, in which comedians Michael Ian Black and Tom Cavanagh, well, eat snacks. It&rsquo;s a loose framework that the hosts depart from frequently, but it&rsquo;s at least something. Or consider Earwolf&rsquo;s very funny <a href="http://www.earwolf.com/show/who-charted/"><em>Who Charted?</em></a>, featuring Howard Kremer and Kulap Vilaysack, who take a look at the week&rsquo;s music and film charts and use those as a launching pad for their riffs.</p>
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A premise helps to distinguish your podcast from those 90,000 other shows out there. Similarly, a format gives a podcast some structure, keeps it from excessively sprawling, and makes life easier for producers and hosts. It&rsquo;s a lot easier to stick to a release schedule when you don&rsquo;t have to reinvent the wheel every day, week, or month.</p>
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<big><strong>5) Originality is a virtue. </strong></big></p>
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As inconceivable as it may seem with so many podcasts out there, there are still plenty of ideas, genres, subject matters, and approaches that <em>haven&rsquo;t</em> been done by anyone&mdash;or at least not done well. If you want your podcast to garner any attention, it will have to do something different, and do it well, but that&rsquo;s not as tall an order as it may seem. After all, at the end of the day the podcast medium is still a relatively young one. It&rsquo;s also a medium with low barriers to entry and limited almost only by your imagination. An original premise or focus will not only distinguish your podcast from other shows&mdash;probably more importantly, it will almost certainly make it more fun for you to produce.</p>
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<em>Illustration via </em><em>by </em><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/15319336@N07/"><em>derrickkwa</em></a><em>/Flickr</em></p>
patrick@thedailydot.com (Patrick Caldwell)Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000http://www.dailydot.com/politics/podspotting-5-tips-better-podcast/Politics